Keysonic KSK 8001 UEL review

A budget backlit keyboard for the style conscious gamer

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Our Verdict

If you spend most of your time in a dark room playing games then you can't go far wrong with the KSK 8001, but those looking for a keyboard to use in the day may want to look elsewhere

For

Adjustable backlighting

Sleek black finish

No drivers needed

Price

Against

Backlight is a bit dull

You want a sleek, black keyboard don't you? You want one where all the keys light up and there's all kinds of media-type buttons on it, don't you? But you really don't want to pay £80 just because someone's tagged on a suitably gamer-orientated name and thinks that's an excuse to commit grand larceny of the wallet.

Well, you may just be in luck because German peripheral posse Keysonic has come up with a slightly frilly, media-centric keyboard for a no-frills price tag, the KeySonic KSK 8001 UEL.

It's black, the plastic isn't that flimsy and comes in three (count 'em) different finishes, including brushed aluminium, and it's got back-lit keys.

It's even got a big dial on it, though sadly unlike the Sidewinder keyboard this doesn't control the volume, as you may have hoped, but just the brightness of the LED backlight. Classy. But that LED backlight comes in two colours; blue and red.

To be honest, like the Razor Lycosa before it, the backlighting is an absolute pain in the eyeball, unless your PC is in a perpetually dark room. In this fairly well lit, human-sized laboratory experiment we call an office, it doesn't matter whether it's blue or red, the lighting hardly shows up and you have to strain to see which key you're pressing.

One plus point to the Keysonic is that it works directly out of the box with no setup required on our part, and that means all the media and browser shortcut buttons function, and that's got to be a good thing.

It is a fairly cheap gaming keyboard, and the slightly dead action to the keys supports this view, but it's always functional, yet sleek, black and back-lit look will fit in well on most gamers' desktop setups.